In the Barber Shop

Brilliant reds, blues, and greens illuminate this ordinary New York barbershop. Ilya Bolotowsky, who made this painting for the Public Works of Art Project, a pilot program of government support for artists, expressed the challenge “to show a typical average drab barbershop and at the same time get a decorative effect through color." Ordinary details come to life with vivid hues: the barber using a straight razor to shave the man in the chair, the red cash register ready to ring up the bill, the spittoon sitting on the floor, and rows of bottles reflected repeatedly in "the endless corridor of two oppositely situated mirrors." A Russian immigrant himself, Bolotowsky enticed fellow immigrants to pose for him, including all four people pictured here, carefully selected by the artist. For him, people from around the world gathered in a New York barbershop embodied the American scene.

During the Great Depression, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised a “new deal for the American people,” initiating government programs to foster economic recovery. Roosevelt’s pledge to help “the forgotten man” also embraced America’s artists.